Cynical Images

Monday, 27 June 2011

A man who is not what he seems; a man with a rage that burns through the pages of history, carrying the burden of not only his wretched existence, but that of his brothers and sisters. His parents. His whole kinship. He does not value his life, for he is cursed to walk the earth until armageddon and the world's ending. He has seen empires and cities burn, the strongest of men crumble to dust and the weak shepherded to their inevitable annihilation - and he does not care. It is the passage of life - nothing can last forever, and where glorious civilizations wither and die, it is certain that the seed of the next has been planted. It is a process that will repeat for all time.

But not for him. His time is coming, and he knows this. He knows there will be no succession, nobody to carry his torch, his burden - and so he locks himself on a collision course. His self-blame is his drive, and what will lead him to his demise - and ultimately his redemption.

He will face armies in their thousands and he will not feel fear, but hope instead. Hope that somewhere, within that crowd, he will find someone who can end his suffering, someone who can relieve his burden - someone who can finally kill him and extinguish his rage once and for all.

And so he walks this earth, searching not only for this person, but forgiveness. A pardon achievable only with his death.

Tuesday, 12 April 2011

Hey peoples, something a little bit different for the moment, maybe I'll come up with something a bit later.

After mulling around the Internet, in particular the Sonisphere website (Announcement day yesterday) I saw a nice little post on the website's Twitter feed, and it was for a blog owned by Godmachine, a freelance designer/artist who often provides artwork for bands such as Bring Me The Horizon, and provides artwork/t-shirt prints for Sonisphere. In fact, I have two t-shirts from the festival and they were all designed by Godmachine.

Now, I don't often pay much attention to art... At least, not since leaving college. I've drifted away from it, but still. Godmachine's art is fantastic, and definitely deserves a mention on this blog. I doubt anyone'll read this, but still. The sheer amount of detail that goes into his or her work is phenomenal and you know, if I had space on my wall I'd probably buy a print or two. If anyone comes across this post, they should definitely go visit Godmachine's blog found here:

http://godmachinedesigns.blogspot.com/

Still not convinced? Here's a couple of pictures I found there, containing two of my favourite sci-fi monsters:

Monday, 11 April 2011

Hey kids, it's about time for another blog post. This time around, we're going to focus on a series of films I've been watching back to back for the past week... Die Hard.

I love Die Hard.

Why?

Because it's one of those films you can watch again and again and again and never get bored. Mind you, I bet John McClane must get seriously bored of fighting terrorists over and over again. You'd think the terrorists would just give up by now; because America clearly has this secret weapon they can always rely on when terror arises. It's almost as though NYPD have this bat-signal kind of thing which they can switch on, and somehow McClane will end up in the wrong place at the wrong time yet again. I wonder if McClane got any bonuses for killing all these terrorists? I mean, all he seemed to get was a bollocking for annoying his superiors with his reckless attitude to upholding the law in the line of duty.

Anyway, I watched the first Die Hard the other night and I'm surprised with how well it holds up with today's standards... It's one of those films which you know is going to be "rebooted" ala Batman Begins at some point in the future, but you know it shouldn't. Everything about Die Hard, to me was perfect. It was an action film with as much story as there were bodies on the floor and Bruce Willis was just perfect casting. He IS John McClane. I'm surprised he hasn't legally changed his name to that, because he lost his Bruce Willisness when he signed on to do Die Hard.

One thing, I especially loved about Die Hard, was the casting of Hans Gruber. Alan Rickman doing something a little different compared to what he was used to at the time, as I believe he did a lot of travelling theatre work up until that moment, like Shakespeare and whatnot. It certainly payed off, he was very convincing as the classically educated and ruthless terrorist mastermind. Rickman plays a great villain, and he is one of two actors who I would love to star in one of these new Bond movies (The gritty/realistic ones with Daniel Craig) as the villain, the other being Sir Ian McKellen; who can make just as good a baddie as he can a wise wizard, something he proved in the first and second X-Men films, where he played Magneto. X-Men III was a good performance from him... It's just a shame the whole film was rubbish.

But going back on track, the sequel to Die Hard, the amazingly titled "Die Hard 2: Die Harder", which in my opinion is up there with "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo" as the greatest, most awesome film titles ever, inevitably came out after the success of Die Hard 1. Glad to see movie studios were greedy even then, I mean how many times can one man get stuck in the same situation? Although this was clearly something they acknowledged, as I believe the tagline for Die Hard 2 was something like "They say lightning never strikes twice... They were wrong." whoever made that bet probably regretted it later...

The film itself wasn't so good as Die Hard 1, as is the common rule for movie sequels. I didn't like the story so much, and I thought the choice of terrorists weren't so great. Infact, they were pretty forgettable compared to the amazing Hans Gruber. Still, it was good to see that the quality of story was retained, the action was still good and John still had his attitude, something which I felt really made the performance great.

After this film came Die Hard 3: With A Vengeance. I will always remember this one because of the film tie-in they had for the PS1, Die Hard: Trilogy, where it had 3 games for each film. The first was a third person shooter set in Nakatomi Plaza, the second was a first person shooter set at Dulles Airport (Think Time Crisis without the lite-gun) and the third was a Grand Theft Auto style game where you went around New York City, driving cars, finding bombs and deactivating them before time went out and you die in a horrible explosion.

The plot for Die Hard 3 is pretty similar, we have John McClane once again being brought up against the terrorists, this time joined by Samuel L Jackson as his reluctant partner. They are brought into a huge game of Simon Says, where "Simon" tells the two where he has placed the next bomb set to go off, and they have to race across New York in order to deactivate it. It's a pretty good plot, it's a breath of fresh air and it's a classic example of a bad idea done brilliantly. See, in this film they decided that Hans Gruber had a brother, who is presumably extremely miffed at McClane after the events in Die Hard 1. Anyway, this brother is played by Jeremy Irons who, while he isn't as good as Alan Rickman, he does a damn good job of playing the villain. It's a similar plot to the first, but I won't spoil it.

After this, it was decided that Hollywood would scrape the barrel and make a Die Hard 4. This was originally going to be called Live Free Or Die Hard, but was eventually shortened to Die Hard 4.0. Thank god. Willis is back, minus hair and sadly without the attitude (For the most part) he brought to the previous three films. This, along with a few other things, really distracted me from the fact that it was a Die Hard film, and not just some average action film (Which, let's be honest, this one was). The villain in this film was okay, a bit meh in all honesty but I guess that's Timothy Olyphant for you, at least from what I've seen from him. If anyone wants to direct me to a better performance from him, feel free because I've only seen him in this and Hitman. I bought the uncut version of Die Hard 4.0, and while I agree that it's better than the theatrical cut, as they originally took all the swearing out so that parents would take their kids to see a film about a cop blowing a load of cyber terrorist's brains out, completely oblivious to the violence in the film... Something I've never understood. If there's violence, it's fine. If there's swearing or nudity, EVERYONE LOSES THEIR MINDS! I seriously hope when Die Hard 5 eventually comes out, they do it properly. Or not at all.

Still, I think I've rambled on enough about Die Hard... To think I was really struggling with what to type when I first started on this post... But hey. I'll just leave it with this picture:

Sunday, 10 April 2011

Another absence from posting, but this time I thought I'd upload a few pics... Not many, but still, I'm quite impressed with how they came out!

The place I took these pictures is called Old Harry rocks... It's in Dorset (Which, at the time of writing, is scorching hot for English weather...) and there's a little story that goes with it. Apparently the devil himself visited Dorset and tried to claim someone's soul after a previous deal. The person refused, and successfully tricked Satan into agreeing not to come after him... If I remember right. Anyway, the devil realised this and in a fit of rage, picked up some massive rocks and threw them in the direction of the guy, but missed; and returned to Hell for a major sulking session... And the rocks he threw became known as Old Harry, which I believe is local slang for the devil. So there you have it. The more you know.

Wednesday, 2 February 2011

So, I just got me a new beastie. It's due to arrive Thursday... Can't wait. What is this beastie? Only an Epiphone G-400 Gothic. It's got a really nice sound to it, and it looks awesome. Plus it's black so it reflects how I feel on the inside, man. /wrists

I'll look forward to belt some t00nz out on this. Still learning, but it should make things a bit easier, especially since I won't have to worry about snapping the strings more or less straight out of the box. Isn't that right, Elevation Guitars? *Shakes fist*

I'll give updates when I get it. If anyone even cares anyway. But it doesn't matter if they do, I suppose a blog is only useful to me as collecting my thoughts in written form and that ^_^

It'll also give me a reason to whack the digital camera out soo... Pics tomorrow =D

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About Me

I am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. I have been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the area of heat retention. I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees, I write award-winning operas, I manage time efficiently.
Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row. I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing, I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook Thirty-Minute Brownies in twenty minutes. I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru.
On weekends, to let off steam, I participate in full-contact origami. Years ago I discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down. I have made extraordinary four course meals using only a mouli and a toaster oven. I breed prize-winning clams. I have won bullfights in San Juan, cliff-diving competitions in Sri Lanka, and spelling bees at the Kremlin.